OPenQuiZWeB(B1/B2)- Linkers21 (RepasoFinal02)

THE GREAT STORM

(0) Although Britain is a place that rarely has extreme weather, there have been a few exceptions over the years. They include the great storm of October 1987. Dozens of people were (1) killed or injured and billions of pounds of damage was caused to buildings (2) properety. The bad weather began over the Bay of Biscay. (3) increasing in strength for a few days, this became a huge storm which started to move north. (4) , on the evening of 15 October it hit the English Channel. Neither the BBC (5) the Meteorological Office had predicted the storm earlier. (6) , when it arrived, nobody was prepared. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, hurricane winds (7) torrential rain swept over southern England.

London was badly affected (8) of the large number of tree-lined streets. The winds were (9) strong that thousands of trees were knocked over, falling on top of cars or buildings that were close to them.

(10) the storm there were power cuts as the high winds and falling trees destroyed electricity cables. As a (11) , many places were in complete darkness, which made things difficult for (12) the fire and ambulance services.

Surprisingly, even (13) there were hurricane force winds throughout the night, several people were copletely unaware of what was happening. They not (14) had to sleep through the storm, they didn’t even hear the falling trees crashing onto their cars on the street. Of course, as (15) as they woke up, they received the nasty shock.